Indigenous elders giving welcome to country speeches were heckled at Anzac Day dawn services across Australia for a second consecutive year, after the anti-immigration group Fight for Australia encouraged supporters to disrupt the ceremonies. The group denied organising a campaign of booing despite a social media post asking followers whether they would be booing, alongside footage of the 2025 Melbourne ceremony, where Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown was booed by members of the National Socialist Network. The video featured superimposed text reading "how loud will you be this year?"

Fight for Australia also urged supporters to contact local Returned and Services League branches to request that welcomes to country be excluded from Anzac Day ceremonies. The group, which launched in recent weeks, has 350 followers on Facebook and 242 on X.

Uncle Ray Minniecon, an Indigenous elder and former service member, was booed while delivering an acknowledgment of country at Sydney's dawn service. "The mocking was unexpected and unnecessary, but it happens," Minniecon said. He said hostility toward Indigenous Australians had increased since the voice referendum was defeated by a 59-41 margin in 2023.

"All we're saying, is that you're on our country, in our land, just acknowledge it and respect whose land you're on. It's not that difficult to understand for me. It's difficult for me to understand why this particular reaction is there," Minniecon said.

The organiser of Fight for Australia, who goes by the moniker Bec Freedom, also runs the larger group March for Australia, which has staged anti-immigration rallies across the country and has 36,000 followers on its main Facebook page along with a community group of 21,000 members. Freedom rejected the suggestion that the booing had been coordinated.

"I'd like to refute that this was a campaign organised by either myself or FightForAustralia/MarchForAustralia. We simply put a few posts up asking people if they would be booing this year due to the amount of grassroots public interest on this topic. But yes, I stand by the content I put out about it," Freedom said. She claimed people had booed "to show we aren't happy with woke rituals taking place at one of our most solemn days in Australia."

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles condemned the disruptions. "Welcome to country is just a respectful thing to do. It's respectful at public events and it's respectful on Anzac Day. And Anzac Day is a day on which we show respect, and to have booing in the face of that is profoundly disrespectful and, in my mind, goes against all that Anzac Day stands for," Marles said.

In Perth, police approached five people and blocked them from attending the dawn service due to their association with March for Australia and their actions in the eastern states. Western Australian police said 15 people identified as members of issue motivated groups were removed. No arrests were made.